Modern refrigerators often include moveable drawers to store meats, vegetables and other items which need a slightly different environment than that provided by the fresh food compartment. In the past several years such drawers have come to be molded from suitable plastic materials and their side walls typically are thin enough that they are somewhat flexible. In addition, as refrigerators get larger the side to side dimension becomes larger and the tolerances become larger. This creates problems for mounting drawers, particularly those that extend completely across a refrigerator. The drawer must have a width appropriate to prevent interference with its support structure when the tolerances are all toward a smaller clearance. As the tolerances accumulate in the other direction, as they will from time to time, the drawer has excessive side-to-side free play on its supporting structure and can wobble. If the user moves the drawer in or out of the refrigerator in an off-center manner, as by grasping the drawer away from its center or by applying force other than parallel to the drawer mounting, the drawer will tend to twist or cock and bind in its support structure. In a severe case the user must strike the drawer a sharp blow to dislodge it. In any event the wobble conveys to the user an impression of poor quality.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,856 incorporates a system with rollers on both the drawer and the support structure. The mating tracks on one side of the drawer fit closely around the rollers while the tracks on the other side are wider. Such a system is complicated and expensive, both in part cost and in assembly time.
It is an object of this invention to provide an improved refrigerator storage system in which the drawer is supported for smooth straight non-binding movement into and out of the refrigerator while, at the same time lateral tolerances are accommodated.
It is another object of this invention to provide such a system which incorporates slide type support bearings.
It is still another object of this invention to provide such a compartment in which the support bearings on one side of the drawer interact with the drawer side to position and guide the drawer while the support bearings on the other side of the drawer accommodate lateral tolerance variations.
Other advantages of the invention will become apparent and a fuller understanding of its mode of construction and method of operation will be gained from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.